Deep Play
by The Grynne
Summary: Sark, Sydney, and Jack. Behind the negotiations of release.


**Deep Play**

_The transfer of a sense of gravity into what is in itself a rather blank and unvarious spectacle...is effected by interpreting it as expressive of something unsettling in the way its authors and audience live, or, even more ominously, what they are._  
-- Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight"

* * *

Jack Bristow had predicted everything from the moment they sat down and talked. He knew the way young man would go. (He understood loss and ambition. God knows he'd been locked up enough times. Times there were when he'd been kept away from his motherless daughter, when he should have been shopping for Christmas presents and instead was lying incapacitated, drained on a hospital bed. He'd sorted his priorities, learned to keep a cool head. He had never given up.) 

Not unkindly, he observed: "Freelance is a risky business for someone like you."

(Sark supposed that he should be somewhat annoyed at this attitude from them, but then dismissed the thought as childish. What possible use was there in keeping a grudge? He could do with having the Americans' completely undeserved luck on his side for a change.)

He swung his legs around, looked right into Jack's eyes, and did not sneer. (May as well, he thought.)

"Do I get a pension plan?"

* * *

They walked Sark into the briefing room, three men abreast, like guarding a skittish bridegroom with an eye on the exits. They gave him back his guns. 

His oath given to their satisfaction (without a further thought, what is already decided needs no hesitation), he'd signed on the line.

(Would have done it in blood too, or something similarly barbaric; if they wanted it he wouldn't have said no. It was a gesture, nothing more; let's not delude ourselves. But Jack Bristow, ever the pragmatist, believed that in certain cases a contract was more reliable than coercion and an appeal to professional pride could get you places the promise of cement block walls wouldn't. One could not be too picky nowadays. After all, patriots of the right stuff were harder than ever to come by.)

Sark, former wanted criminal, now immune by association. (He rather liked the sound of it.)

See something you like? (Or don't like?) Back off, fellas.

His arsenal spread out on that table (perfectly equidistant, like they had something to prove, like they were making a point heard), he couldn't resist a look at Sydney.

She had protested, more vehemently and for longer than the others (Jack was concerned less by its effects on the team than by the psychological explanations); had vented and spat and generally made her displeasure known.

(Sark, Sydney knew very well, was a cheat. His word was worth less than nothing. He was a cold-blooded murderer, was probably the poster-boy for what a fucked up childhood could produce. You couldn't even play Scrabble with the man without a dictionary; he was a petty kind of cheat. He'd abused and had been abused. Truth became taunts in his mouth. He spoke in a language she would never really know.)

Sark thought he read disgust in her every feature. And a savage hope: that he'd take a gun in hand –

(She wondered if maybe she hadn't listened closely enough, when they had sat together in his cell, and he'd told her things about Irina.)

– Shoot his own brains out, and spare her the future inconvenience.

He checked if the first automatic he picked up was loaded (it was, what gullible fools), and gave her his most genuinely pleased smile in return.

* * *

On the plane his accent, London over East Midlander, drops into the middle distance. Scooped up, shredded, by the engines. The black Atlantic buries another disguise. 

Mr. Sark. No given name. An immaculate landscape with no distinguishing marks. (To cross it he'd have to give you the map.)

Six unbroken weeks in the Mediterranean sun have bleached Sark's hair near white. His arms beneath the long-sleeved shirt are deeply tanned, past peeling, the colour of vellum. He sees her bearing down and starts to fold his Greek newspaper (into a neat rectangle, wedges it between the chair and his suitcase so his hands are free).

Sydney says: "You look like shit." (Her eyes say: I've missed you.)

The End

2 January 2006


End file.
